Falloff node setup similar to 3DS Max falloff node? Need perpendicular / parallel falloff for correct fabric rendering
&quot;With the default settings, the map generates white on faces whose normals point outward from the current view, and black on faces whose normals are parallel to the current view.&quot;
What you're describing sounds like the dot product of the incoming vector and the normal vector.  Probably, clamped:

If I've misunderstood what &quot;point outward&quot; means, you may want to multiply the dot product by -1.0 instead of 1.0.
Use of the incoming vector might not be appropriate for Cycles-- some variation of the view vector (from camera data) might be appropriate instead, although I can't figure out what space that vector is in; or, you might just do it for camera rays only.  Remember, incoming vector can be incoming from camera, or incoming from reflection or refraction or anything else, given Cycles bounces.
The dot product does not give a value that varies linearly with angle.  It varies linearly with projection of incoming onto normal, which isn't the same thing.  It is common to prefer arccosine(dot(v1,v2)) to dot(v1,v2), which varies linearly with the angle instead.

Which requires a bit of remapping to pi-based stuff.  Both of these examples are black where the normal is perpendicular to incoming and white where it is parallel with incoming; the difference is how they interpolate between those two colors.